Honors 10 students share essay tips

In high schools, an extremely common practice to help students increase their writing skills is through writing essays and papers. In harder English classes, the essays can become long and tedious processes. To give tips on how to make it easier, the honors English 10 students below spoke about their writing process for their English essays.

Junior Kaylee Stitchman said, “I like to write my thesis or claim before anything. That way I have a basic idea of what will be talked about in my paper. Then I collect all of the quotes and information I want to use throughout the entire essay.”

Stitchman said in regards to how this process helps her, “This helps me because then I know where I’m going with my paper and what I have to talk about before I use the quotes. It really sets up what I’ll say for my analysis and explanations.”

Freshman Jay Lawson said, “Personally I just like getting a good outline of my essay down first before I make any fancy brushstrokes or put rhetorical devices in. Getting the majority of your essay down without worrying about all the intricate stuff really helps with my progress. If I ever get stuck on any particular subject in the essay I try to leave it and move on to the next and revisit it when I finish.”

In regards to how this is a beneficial strategy, Lawson said, “All of this stuff helps me by making it so I never have to stop and think particularly hard about what I’m writing, I can just let it all flow out and edit the worst parts of it later.”